How to Become a Contributor For Well-Known Publications | Ep. #345

In Episode #345, Eric and Neil discuss how to become a contributor for well-known publications. Tune in to learn the strategies that will land you that GREAT deal—you only need one to make your efforts worth it. You’ll find out the importance of focusing on your content and connecting with editors and guest contributors.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

  • 00:27 – Today’s topic: How to Become a Contributor For Well Known Publications
  • 00:47 – If you want to be a contributor for a specific publication, look at their format first
    • 00:53 – Write something that is interesting to the editor while following their format
    • 00:57 – Reach out to editors and try to help them out
  • 01:06 – Check out other websites that are looking for guest bloggers through Google search
  • 01:23 – It is true that you’re not going to generate a positive ROI from a guest post, but it takes ONE deal to make it worth it
    • 01:47 – Neil wrote on a publication before and was spotted by a CEO and Neil made a 7 figure deal
    • 02:35 – Guest writing will eventually pay off
  • 02:44 – You can find editors on LinkedIn and find their emails though Hunter
    • 02:57 – Be brief and try to help them
  • 03:01 – The publications are more interested with content
  • 03:07 – Most contributors are not that big in their space
  • 03:30 – Other than emailing editors, you can reach out to guest contributors of a publication
    • 03:35 – Network with them and try to help them
    • 03:46 – After they get comfortable with you, ask them to introduce you to the editor
    • 03:59 – When you get accepted, don’t backlink to your website because Google will know it
  • 04:15 – Focus on building a brand
  • 04:55 – The high DA links are not worth it
  • 05:18 – That’s it for today’s episode!

3 Key Points:

  1. Write something that will pique the editor’s interest and use their format.
  2. Try to network with guest contributors and ask them to introduce you to the editor.
  3. Focus on building a brand by creating GREAT content.

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Full Transcript of The Episode

Speaker 1: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Siu.

Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.

Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.

Eric Siu: And today we're gonna talk about how to become a contributor for well-known publications.
So, everybody wants to write for Ink, everybody wants to write for Business Insider, Time Magazine, things like that. And they probably think it's really hard to do it. But ultimately, it's actually not that bad. You just have to look at these publications and then look at the format that they're writing. Let's say entrepreneur, looking for key words, or words that are six to eight hundred words. You have to think about, how do you write something in that format, and then write something that's interesting to specific editors, reach out to these editors, and then come to them, trying to help them out first, right?
And then ideally ... I'm just kind of jumping all over the place right now. But you know, reach out to them with something relevant. And if you don't have a track record already, go to these other sites that are looking for, you know, guest blogging or "Write for Us" for example. You could do it in a Google Search. You can find a lot of these sites, start reaching out to the smaller ones first. Write for them first, and then build up a track record. Then you can start to reach out to these bigger ones.

Neil Patel: And for those people who say like, "Guest posting isn't worth it, there's not a direct ROI or contributing on these large sites isn't worth it," that's true. In most cases, you're not gonna generate a positive ROI per post, but it just takes one deal to really make it worth it. For example, I contributed literally over a thousand articles to all these major sites. I don't do so much as now compared to what I did before, but a CEO of a multibillion dollar company was reading my articles on Content Marketing Institute, Ink, and Forbes, he saw me pretty much everywhere. And I got a seven figure deal just because of that.
And at that point, I thought, "Hey, guest posting isn't that effective." But I was like, "Huh, not too bad." And then the other day I had a cell phone company that is worth three billion dollars in a developing region. They also found my cell from a lot of the guest contributor articles that I did on all these sites, and they offered me in exchange for some phone call advice over three months they offered me half a million bucks. So I'm like, although there's not really a direct ROI if you do like X posts you're gonna make X dollars per post or whatever it may be, eventually if you're selling high ticket items, it can definitely pay off. I've also gotten a lot of paid speaking gigs and stuff like that from these guest posts as well.

Eric Siu: If you're looking for these editors, you can easily just use LinkedIn and then combine it with a tool like hunter.io. Reach out to these people through LinkedIn and then find their emails through ... You can use a tool like hunter.io or findoutemail, for example. And then go from there. But just make sure, you know, keep it brief, try to help these people out. These editors are getting hit up all the time, and these big publications, they're all looking for more content, right? If you look at a lot of these contributors that are writing, they're not really big shot people or anything like that. They're normal people just contributing decent content to these sites.

Neil Patel: So with these accounts, you could try to hit up the editors. I found that doesn't work too well. It's okay, it used to work better like a year or two ago, but what happens is these editors now get bombarded, so what you should do is go to LinkedIn or go to Forbes or whatever site you wanna write for. Go find all the guest contributors, right? These are people who want like staff writers. Network with them, provide them feedback on their articles, help them out. And after you do this for a month, I know that sounds like a long time, but literally three, four emails, 'cause you don't want to bombard them each day, then ask them for an introduction to an editor. When a current writer introduces you to a editor, you're much more likely to get a author account where you can then start publishing on these sites. And if you do get accepted, don't just shove back links onto your own website to try to manipulate Google. It's not that effective in the long run, Google knows about it. They're looking for people that are guest contributors and trying to devalue those links. And don't just try to shove in links to other people's websites and sell 'em. More so, focus on building a brand, building up your authority within a space, and in the long run it should help with public speaking or generating bigger consulting deals.

Eric Siu: That's actually a good point. I think recently I read something on Search Engine Round Table where somebody was asking about ... 'Cause here's the thing. I get hit up by these link builders all the time saying, "Oh, you know, we have access to these high-DA, high domain authority sites." And you know, they're listing like, these large sites like maybe a Huffington Post or a Forbes for example, right? And you know, Huff Po links I believe are no follow. But the thing is, this is being done over and over. Think about how this appears to Google. So I think they've already caught on to it basically, because somebody was asking about these high-DA sites, and then one of the guys, I don't know how to pronounce his last name, but it's Gary [inaudible 00:05:00], maybe? But he was saying like, "Hey, it's not hard for us to ignore these links, and then if you're trying to sell these high-DA links, probably not worth your time." Again, take that with a grain of salt. Just, Google says these things a lot. But it's just worth for you to know that.
But, Neil, anything else?

Neil Patel: Nope, nothing else in mind.

Eric Siu: Great. That's it for today, and we'll see you tomorrow.

Speaker 1: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review, so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow, right here on Marketing School.

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